It’s been one whole day since the Palm Pre was released upon the masses. One of the killer features of this phone was supposed to be its ability to have multiple applications open at one time. That doesn’t sound like an amazing thing, but to be able to listen to the Pandora app while you are typing an e-mail? That’s handy.

The only problem is that the Palm Pre’s App Catalog is woefully understocked. Why exactly would Sprint and Palm not develop a multitude of applications for their savior phone? Also confusing is the fact that the developer’s kit for the Palm Pre was only recently released. Sprint CEO Dan Hesse said in a recent Cnet interview that both Sprint and Palm have plans to develop apps but that takes time.

Way back at CES 2009 in January, Palm announced its webOS and how it was supposed to use standard web languages for its applications. This should mean that it would be relatively easy to create applications for this operating system since there are so many web applications out there already. You would think that these web apps would need some small modifications to get on the Pre.

However, here we are after Palm and Sprint’s big day and the App Catalog is not as robust as necessary. Yes, the other app stores took time to build their libraries of applications. The only problem is that Sprint and Palm need this device to be a hit.

A BlackBerry app store is just icing on the cake for RIM; that device has a huge group of loyal users. The timing issue will probably hurt Sprint more than Palm since the Pre will become available on other carriers eventually.

Maybe Sprint should get on that “Now Network” and tell its developers to get apps flowing as soon as possible to keep the company afloat. They need to create a must-buy situation with the Sprint version of the Palm Pre before it’s too late.

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Palm Pre Apps

It's been more than a week since launch, and there are definitely a few new third-party apps available now. And they seem to coming in and updating at a reasonably healthy pace, but it's really surprising that the SDK is _still_ not out yet. And no word on when it will be either.